I can't take any of the credit for the two new articles that were posted on how to work with WSS 3.0 as a developer other then to say I was one of the many who said WTF to the documentation about it.

Over all the articles don't make WSS development pushbutton but at least this documents the process much better. I hope you find them as good of a read as I did.

Development Tools and Techniques for Working with Code in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (Part 1 of 2)
Development Tools and Techniques for Working with Code in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (Part 2 of 2)